Reliance Industries Ltd to ignite fintech arena

A few months down the line if you walk into your neighbourhood retail store don’t be surprised if you find a Jio-badged QR code — or, if you step into a Reliance Digital outlet, you may find a Jio executive hawking a consumer durable loan.

These are the shape of things to come after last week’s announcement by Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) that it would demerge its financial services business. However, a key implication of this development is that Reliance will be stepping into the turf of Paytm, PhonePe, and even Bajaj Finance.

It is early days yet since its plans will only be known after the company gets all the approvals from its shareholders, creditors and NCLT for the proposed demerger.